Do you ever look at a cover and think....

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Can a layout be protected by copyright?

The actual picture/layout is protected by copyright.
So you can't take someone else's cover image, change it a bit and use it yourself.
The 'concept' of the picture/layout is not protected.
So you can see the first cover, then tell your cover artist that you want a relatively empty background with a noose formed by a necktie in the centre, with text within the noose and the author's name outside the noose in the bottom right, and the cover they produce for you will not violate the copyright of the original cover.

[WillAdams]

Providing art direction for directly re-creating a particular cover design is certainly not ethical, and fails the ``smell'' test of, ``Would a person believe this work was created w/o access to and knowledge of that work.'' --- moreover, in a court case, such a set of instructions would be a ``smoking gun''.

That said, people who're using stock photography for their cover design shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same photograph for similar works and arrive at a similar design solution (without such instructions).

[treadlightly]

Here are two:

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Providing art direction for directly re-creating a particular cover design is certainly not ethical, and fails the ``smell'' test of, ``Would a person believe this work was created w/o access to and knowledge of that work.'' --- moreover, in a court case, such a set of instructions would be a ``smoking gun''.

It really, really wouldn't.
A clean room reimplementation is not copyright violation.
AMD produced completely Intel-compatible CPUs using the same process. One team would example the Intel CPU and produce a complete specification of how it worked. A second team would take that specification and produce a compatible CPU of their own. As long as team two never actually see the original CPU, this is clean.

[lioslaith]

I'm noticing this happening more and more. Occassionally I've come across it in traditionally published book generally books published by the same publisher and in the same vein.

But I find it happening a lot in indie pubs now. I've noticed several images being used multiple times on several differing titles. I tend to notice it if I own a book using the same image(s)/model(s) and see it on the 'new releases' list. It causes a rubber neck reaction and it takes a second closer look to see that it's a different book altogether and I'm not going like I originally thought.

I figured that the publishers were running out of new images to use and were recycling those they had the rights to to save themselves mullah.

[jehane]

Years ago I came across an instance of book cover art designed for a specific book being used for a foreign translation of someone else's book. Both were print books from traditional publishers. The artwork was by Michael Whelan and for the cover of Melanie Rawn's The Ruins of Ambrai. The other novel for a foreign edition of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Holly Lisle's Glenraven. The worst part was that it didn't suit the second novel at all.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?474391

[Pulpmeister]

To bring up the cover in Kindle, I open the book, go Menu, then key down to cover. I also do that when I finish a book. But hey, first of all, all of mine are on Calibre, with that nice colour cover-show-n-tell panel at the top. (I don't buy through the Kindle, but on the Net, and then load into Kindle later.)

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Could you tell us please how to set a Kindle to show book covers?

You've set your Kindle to not show covers, but I'm old enough and obsessional enough to prefer to see the book cover when the ebook opens for the first time.

I believe he is talking about the home screen. On the Paperwhite you can see either titles or covers. I've never heard of a way to change the default for where the books start when opened.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

I believe he is talking about the home screen. On the Paperwhite you can see either titles or covers. I've never heard of a way to change the default for where the books start when opened.

Yes, I'm talking about the home screen, which you can set to show either covers or a text list. I prefer the list view.

[LovesMacs]

I have a hardcover edition of selected writings by C.S. Lewis. Its cover has two outstretched arms holding an apple. The same cover photograph is used on one of the Twilight novels.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, I'm talking about the home screen, which you can set to show either covers or a text list. I prefer the list view.

I'd have preferred the cover view, *if* the Kindle would also show the title... often, I can't read the title on the covers themselves.

With regard to seeing duplicate or maybe even stolen covers: I haven't; yet. Maybe it's because I mostly read books that belong to fantasy series, and many of those series have their own cover designers.

[WillAdams]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

It really, really wouldn't.
A clean room reimplementation is not copyright violation.
AMD produced completely Intel-compatible CPUs using the same process. One team would example the Intel CPU and produce a complete specification of how it worked. A second team would take that specification and produce a compatible CPU of their own. As long as team two never actually see the original CPU, this is clean.

Electronic chips are functional devices, and as such, the copyright is inherent in the implementations, and the courts have ruled that a specification for a device cannot be a creative work worthy of copyright --- there is no such ruling for the description of a book's cover image, esp. one so detailed as to essentially allow re-creation, and a number of court cases going the other way, and a myriad number of times when the settlement was reached out of court in the original designer's favour.

[fjtorres]

Here's a slew of them, 19 layout ideas that have practically become cliches:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/19-book-cover-cliches

And few are bad indie covers.
Apparently there is a lot of convergence in the book design world.

[GeoffR]

Ken MacLeod's book is published by Macmillian USA, John Scalzi's by Random House Germany.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Here's a slew of them, 19 layout ideas that have practically become cliches:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/19-book-cover-cliches

And few are bad indie covers.
Apparently there is a lot of convergence in the book design world.

A goodly portion of those looked like they even used the same stock shot

Some were flipped/rotated
Some had artistic 'treatment' applied
But the base image was the same. Eg. Man by fence has the same water puddle

The cliche went so far as to position the Author and Title in the same locations (top vs bottom)